Wednesday, March 24, 2010

Must be CS ( clear sky) early am. Woke up and find these meteors got logged by the sky patrol system.
The 'untidy' dots near the building block were created by the Pointers to the Southern Cross, Crux. After mapping the background stars ( analysis indicated all were SPOs) i realized the upper dots were created by red Antares in Scorpion -the Mar's rival.

Here is an example how the background stars got mapped onto the 3.8mm single video frame using UFOAnalyser. On the lower right is a negative magnitude brightness meteor or shooting star. Crux is seen near the mid top of the white building block. Constellation of Scorpion on mid top right. [ at wide angle only brighter stars can be detected by the video]

A satellite flash upper left .. RA18.1, Dec -14.25

To find the unknown flash

a) When - timing?

b) Where - position RA, Dec

c) What [objects] Get satellite two lines elements TLEs

d) How - run a planetarium software in object vicinity

e) check for closest match [ time, position, direction of travel ]

Next a trip to www.space-track.org to grab the bulk TLEs.
Run Skymap66 and bring up the region of the sky. Park the '+' cursor at the flash point and ran the listings with +/- 1 minute of reported time. With a bit of luck you can eliminate other entries and pick the mostly one.
Cosmos 1523.